


Five times Rita Hanson spends the day with Phil Connors on February 2nd (plus one time on February 3rd)

by muffin_song



Category: Groundhog Day - Minchin/Rubin
Genre: F/M, Rita Hanson is always a badass, Trigger warning: suicide (canonical), five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 01:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13136295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muffin_song/pseuds/muffin_song
Summary: Day(s) in the the February 2nds of Rita Hanson.  Written for the musical-verse, but can also be  read within the context of the movie-verse





	Five times Rita Hanson spends the day with Phil Connors on February 2nd (plus one time on February 3rd)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antivillain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antivillain/gifts).



They all told Rita that Phil Connors would be an asshole.  

He definitely was.

It wasn’t just the way that guys like him always got away with shit she could never pull.  (And dear Lord did Rita have a list of things she wished she could say and not get fired for).  It was that Phil Connors did all of it with such a gleam in his eye, like he knew that he was pulling it off on charm alone.  And he certainly was charming, and funny.  Ish.

But hey, this wasn’t a rom com.  Rita had dated enough assholes to know that ninety nine times out of a hundred they didn’t have hearts of gold.  Well, except for Mr. Darcy, and that was due to Colin Firth’s magical powers.

But seriously, fuck that guy.  (Phil Connors, not Colin Firth).  Rita hadn’t had a snow day since she was 18, and she was going to live up every minute of it.  Rita ordered her favorite nostalgia drink from the uncannily good looking bartender - what was he doing hiding out in a small town, anyway?  She scribbled a few lines in her journal and promptly decided that was enough hard work for the day.  With any luck Punxsutawney Phil himself would be at this Groundhog Ball thing.  Or maybe at least the guy in the groundhog suit.  People in mascot costumes always had the best stories.  

As she got ready to leave, Rita almost felt sorry for Phil.  Sure, he got his smug sense of superiority, but it couldn’t be fun to stew in hipster fury on a night like tonight.

Rita laughed and shook her head.  Wasn’t she always the one saying the world spent too much psychoanalyzing these self-absorbed assholes?  If Phil wanted to get over himself, he was welcome to it.  In the meantime Rita was going to dance.

 

* * *

 

As the disaster in front of her played out, all Rita could think about was the interview question around how as an Associate Producer she would handle an unexpected setback.  She had smiled, talked about how how she would assess the situation from a birds eye view and then start to triage using the resources available.

Why oh why oh why hadn’t that HR lady called her on her bullshit?  Why couldn’t she go back in time and slap herself for that answer?  Because right now three things were true. 

One, her weatherman was MIA. 

Two, Punxsutawney Phil waited for no one. 

Three, Rita was fucking panicked.

That last one didn't matter.  It was time to unleash her Associate Producer superpowers.

Rita finished stumbling through her first live TV broadcast ten minutes later.  It was also her first TV broadcast.  Not to mention her first time in front of a camera that didn’t involve family vacation home videos.  She was pretty sure that she had something stuck in her teeth the entire time, but all her Associate Producer mind could focus on was how she’d explain to her boss that she let a non-union member do a live broadcast.  Maybe she should join the union just in case this ever happened again.  Or take up clown school.  Did people actually do that walk of shame thing when you got fired?  Or was that just on TV?

Larry gave her a sympathetic high-five afterwards.  Rita didn’t have the heart to refuse, even though she really just wanted to kick something.  She would wait to unleash her rage on the real target.

That’s not fair, Rita thought.  There were a million no-fault explanation for Phil not showing up to work.  What if he had a family emergency?  Or if he had a stroke in bed, and even right now was lying incapacitated in his room at the B&B?

Rita quickly moved through the crowds towards the B&B.  The scenarios multiplied in her head.  What if Phil had fallen in the shower and broken something?  Or had an aneurysm?  Or fuck, if an alien abduction was going to happen anywhere, it would probably be rural Pennsylvania.

Mabel Lancaster, thank God, was understanding about the situation and just as concerned.  Rita followed her upstairs and waited behind Mabel as she gingerly knocked on the door.  

“Mr. Connors, are you in there?” asked Mabel.  “Are you alright?”

From inside came a long, piercing scream.

It’s my first remote broadcast, and the talent is getting murdered, Rita realized in horror.  

Fuck that, not on my watch.  

She tore the spare keys from Mabel’s hands and shoved the door open.

Inside, a man and woman wearing matching blue and pink groundhog hats looked up from under the sheets.  Wearing...only matching blue and pink groundhog hats.  “Is something the matter?” asked the woman in a squeaky voice.

A third figure emerged from under the sheet, wearing what looked like a mascot head.  Is that supposed to be a groundhog? Rita wondered.  Not that the species of mascot was more important than the fact that the third figure was wearing only a furry mascot head.  A yawn came from inside the costume.  “What time is it anyway?”

She knew that voice.  Rita’s blood began to boil.  Only one thought was coherent as she saw red.

And that’s when I shot him, your Honor.

 

* * *

 

Rita considered the situation as she took another sip of her mudslide with an extra shot of Bailey’s.  Normally she was a sweet vermouth on the rocks with a twist kind of girl, but she had just punched Channel 5’s star weatherman.  Surely that counted as a special occasion.

I really punched Phil Connors, Rita thought again.  Surely that was every Associate Producer’s wildest dream.  She got to do it after only her second day of working with the man.  That didn’t seem fair.

Her three month review was going to be interesting, to say the least.

Screw that.  If the station was going to let men like Phil get away with hitting on anything that moved then Rita was not going to feel bad about any of this.  And if anyone gave her flack about it, she would...run off and be an Associate Producer for the Amazons in Wonder Woman or something.  They had to be hiring.  

The extra shot of Bailey’s was so worth the five bucks.

You almost had to feel sorry for the guy.  No one at the station liked Phil Connors.  Maybe he even believed all that crap he was spouting about love.  Rita was 99% sure it was an act.  She ultimately wasn’t sure which was worse.

They said guys like that had bad home lives, or they became bullies because they were bullied in turn.  Maybe there actually was some dark and hidden pain at the root of all of it.  

Or maybe Phil really just was an asshole. The world spent enough time making melodramatic movies about yet another white guy’s angst.  She wasn’t going to add fuel to the fire.

It was a shame, really.  It was kind of fun matching wits against him.  But not enough to sacrifice her self-respect and put up with that kind of BS.

Rita downed the rest of her glass.  Maybe there was still time to catch the end of the Groundhog Ball.

 

* * *

 

When Rita was 14, her grandmother died peacefully in her sleep.  Rita must have cried for a week straight.  Things would be going okay and then some would bring out another of Gamma smiling, or some other reminder that she wasn’t going to play poker with her again.  Ever.

Her parents wouldn’t let her see the body.  As a result sometimes Rita wondered if Gamma had really died.  How could someone with so much life just not exist any more?

When Rita was 21, one of her fellow members of the Bryn Mawr Class of 2003 downed an entire bottle of Aspirin in one gulp and died while unconscious.  Rita hadn’t known Sara Nguyen well, but her best friend Hannah had been the girl’s first year roommate.  Rita ended up at the memorial, where people told funny stories about Sara.  Recounted the times the deceased had helped them out in a crisis.  Talked about how the world would never have someone like them.

Rita was embarrassed, but the truth was she did cry, even though she knew it wasn’t her place, her grief.  Rita apologized to a dry-eyed Hannah afterwards.  It was a melodramatic thing to do when  this wasn’t her loss.  Hannah just squeezed her shoulder and told her that it was heartening to know some humans still had empathy.

When Rita was 36, she was asked to identify Phil Connors’s lifeless corpse.  She knew Phil more through his onscreen persona than real life, but one look under the sheet and she could definitely tell it was him.  Only...not quite.  The guy had only been dead a few hours and his body already looked weird.  Maybe this was how people were supposed to look post-mortem.

The truth was that Rita had never seen a dead body before.  And what made a confident, successful weatherman in his prime jump off a building anyway?

This didn’t feel fair.  Someone else should be doing this, not some random co-worker who had only met him once before.  Okay, Phil wasn’t popular at the station.  But he had to have someone who would grieve him.  Everyone did.  

Right?  

Rita stopped believing in the literal version of God a long time ago, but she bowed her head all the same.  Wherever you are now, Phil Connors, I hope you’re at peace.

 

* * *

 

Even as a teenager Rita was never into ouija boards or tarot cards.  She liked a good science fiction movie as much as the next person, but the emphasis was on the fiction part.  Rita watched enough bad reality TV to know there were plenty of ways people could pull off the supposedly supernatural.  

Still, the way Phil knew things about everyone in Punxsutawney was uncanny, to say the least.  

Or he could just be insane.

But the despair written on Phil’s face - that was real, even if this whole time loop thing was in his head.  Or maybe Phil was just faking it and this was all some screwed up way of getting into her pants.  Wasn’t her uncle always going on about how you can’t trust homeless people asking for money cause half of them are probably hipster kids?

Screw that.  Maybe Phil was making it all up or certifiably loony.  She would accept the consequences if that were the case.  But she was not going to be the person who saw someone in that much pain and walked away.

Besides, today had been pretty fun.  Whether or not Phil Connors was actually caught in a time loop didn't change that experience.  He certainly looked a lot better than when he stumbled into the diner this morning.  Rita’s mouth curved proudly upwards.  She’d like to think she had something to do with that.

They stayed outside until the snow picked up and it got too cold, at which time they retreated into the warmth of the diner.  It turned out that Phil knew some pretty incredible stuff off the secret menu.  It was so secret that even the staff didn’t know they had some of it.  But Phil’s instructions to the kitchen staff were eerily precise, and the end result was actually pretty tasty.  Who would have thought that you could get amazing banh mi in Punxsutawney?

Eventually they got kicked out of the diner and continued their conversation in the B&B's living room.  By 11:30 Rita got the sense that Mrs. Lancaster wanted to turn in for the night.  Which meant their only option was Phil's room. 

Rita would have said yesterday that there was no way in hell she’d end up in Phil Connors’ bed.  And hey, that was only true in the very literal sense.  And only because Phil had the good sense to just laugh when Rita proclaimed she was taking the bed as reward for winning 6 out of 10 games of Tic Tac Toe.

Rita hoped for Phil’s sake that he wasn’t actually unstuck in time.  Whatever had happened to him today, he was surprisingly tolerable to be around.  Bordering of pleasant, even if in a curmudgeonly way.  That in of itself had to be supernatural.

“So what do you think happens tomorrow?” Rita mused.  

Phil raised an eyebrow.  “You’re kidding me, right?”

“No, really.  So you go back in time, but what happens to me?”

Phil shrugged.  “You wake up tomorrow morning with no memory of this happening.”

“So I’m also stuck in a time loop.”  That was kind of creepy when you thought about it.

“I guess.  Maybe this happens all over the world and we just don’t know it because it’s not us and we forget every loop.  Maybe every other time it's been some guy in Indonesia.”

Rita could have sworn that was the plot of something on Netflix recently.  “I’m just saying if we wake up tomorrow and it’s February 3rd, you’re buying me breakfast.”

Phil laughed.  “If we wake up tomorrow and it’s February 3rd, I promise I’ll buy you the entire restaurant.”

Well, Rita had always wanted to be a small business owner.  “You’re on, Connors.”

Despite her declarations of being an all-nighter champ, Rita dozed off around 4 AM.  She was only vaguely aware of a blanket being draped over her.

“Thank you,” Phil whispered.

 

* * *

 

Punxsutawney’s diner was an excellent spot for the obligatory slightly-awkward-morning-after breakfast.  But Phil’s preternaturally good spirit from yesterday was still in full force.  Maybe unlike Santa Claus, Punxustawney Phil's magic lasted all year.

Phil and Rita were ready to settle the check when Phil drummed his fingers nervously over the table.  “So...let’s just say you made a bet with someone,” he started.  “And you promised something outrageous because you were convinced that it couldn’t physically happen.”  His eyes went wide with horror - he must have realized what that implied.  “Shit, no, no, no, what we did was-” His hand motions were frantic.  “I promise you this is not Guys and Dolls.  I really-”

Rita snorted and shook her head.  “I trust you, Casanova.  But now I really want to hear the rest of that sentence.”  Phil never struck her as the kind of guy who was into musicals.  Guys and Dolls, huh?  The guy did an amazingly good job of hiding an actual personality behind his shallow weatherman persona.  He’d probably have a better rep at the station if he let people see it more.

“Okay.  So, I have this friend who made this bet, and there was really supposed to be no way he could lose it cause that would defy the rules of physics.  Except he did lose it.  And now he can’t actually live up to his end of it.”

Rita stabbed her sole surviving noodle with a fork.  “Okay, so what’s the reason your um, friend, can’t live up to his end of the bargain?”

“Hey, Doris!” Phil called over to one of the wait staff.  A middle aged lady in a uniform came their way.  Rita was sure she was on her break until about 5 minutes ago - how exactly did Phil know everybody in this town?

“What’s up, sweetheart?” Doris asked.

“This place isn’t for sale, is it?”

Doris let out a guffaw.  “Over my mother’s dead body.”

Phil shrugged.  “That answers that, I guess.”

Rita furrowed her brow.  “So you made a bet which...okay, I’ll trust you, had nothing to do with last night.  And you said if you lost you’d buy this place?”

“That’s the dilemma - Doris and her mom aren’t selling.”  He looked down at the diner floor.  “Any chance I could get your breakfast instead?”

“I have no idea what this has to do with me, but congratulations.”  She pushed the check towards him.  “I grant you the privilege of paying for my food this time.”  Rita could say one thing about Phil - he wasn’t what she expected.  But whatever private embarrassment he was stumbling over, it was kind of endearing.

“This time,” Phil repeated.  He licked his lips.  “So um…does that mean you wanna do this again?”  A smile crossed his face, and suddenly the on-air confidence (if not the pomp) was back in full force.  “Say…on Friday at that new Asian fusion place downtown?”

No matter how this turned out, Rita was grateful to Phil - it was good to be reminded that not everything (or everyone) was what you thought.  To look at the world in a different way.  “You’re on.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for the prompt, and I hope you enjoyed - I had a blast writing Rita!
> 
> For anyone who wandered in here with only knowledge of the movie, the musical is fantastic. I highly recommend checking out the cast album!


End file.
